Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Blocked, Page 4
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: MS. DE BOURGH turns her head sharply toward Mrs. Bennet, chin lifted, hands still folded, in a voice that is clearly not a request. Jane and Mrs. Bennet sit on the sofa; Lizzie stands with her arms folded. MS. DE BOURGH: 'I wish to speak to your daughter. Alone.' Panel 2: MRS. BENNET backs out through the doorway into the warm front hall, mouth open, entirely bewildered, her phone held low at her side with only its plain dark back casing showing. Panel 3: LIZZIE BENNET stands in front of the tall window, arms unfolded and loose at her sides, shoulders squared, meeting the older woman's stare without flinching. LIZZIE: 'We can walk in the garden.'
Image description
Three panels: Ms. de Bourgh demands to speak to Lizzie alone, Mrs. Bennet backs bewildered into the hall, and Lizzie squares up and offers to walk in the garden.
About this chapter
Two days after Jane says yes to Charles, a long black car noses up the flagstone path of the Bennet house and does not belong there. Out of it steps Ms. de Bourgh — Darcy's aunt, the imperious matriarch of the estate where Lizzie once refused him — who has driven all this way on the strength of a rumour: that her nephew is about to be engaged to Elizabeth Bennet. She dismisses the household, marches Lizzie out to the garden, and lays out the case with surgical contempt: the family's disgrace, Lydia's patched-up marriage, a match that was planned for Darcy since he was a boy. Then she asks for a promise — never, under any circumstances, to accept him. Lizzie, who has spent weeks certain she'd already lost him, refuses. Not because she has any claim on him, but because she will not be told whom she's allowed to want. Every threat de Bourgh throws — censure, exile from his world, being despised by everyone connected to him — Lizzie meets and out-argues, until the old woman leaves in cold fury, taking no leave and sending no compliments to her mother. Lizzie stands in the wreckage of the conversation while her mother demands to know who that was, and then, at the kitchen window, watching the car dwindle down the leafy street, the real meaning arrives: nobody drives two hours to forbid a thing that was never going to happen. Somebody told that woman something. Which means Darcy has not, after all, closed the tab on her.